


And the Earth was Shaking

by Captainsomnia



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, Eldritch Bill Cipher, Lots of it, Multi, Possesion, Slow Burn, Stan knows, The Northwest twins, but some good moments too, mabel and dipper are not related, nothing is what it seems, rated for later chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-01 07:57:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6509575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captainsomnia/pseuds/Captainsomnia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In an unknown accident, Dipper Pines' Grunkle has lost all his memories. To be there for his recovery, he goes back to Gravity Falls for the summer. When he gets there, Ford is wracked with immovable guilt at nights, hiding something about the accident from Dipper. With the aid of his childhood friends, the Northwest twins, and a new girl who looks strikingly similar to Dipper. They aren't prepared for the dark forces that bind the town.<br/>In the shadows of the Falls, something is waiting for Dipper, and for the world. But who?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Welcome Back

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, this is my first work for Gravity Falls, so I'm really excited to share I with you guys!  
> This is, for the most part, not beta'd, so if you see any grammatical errors, please inform me so that I can fix them.  
> Hope you enjoy!

   The first cold breeze of the Falls sent chills down Dipper’s spine as he stepped off the creaking bus. His bags weighed him down and made it awkward to move from the high steps.

   No one was waiting for him at the stop, so Dipper resigned himself to walking the distance to his Grunkles’ home alone.

   The trees swayed with harsh wind as Dipper trekked along the path in the forest. Back during his childhood years, he and his Grunkle Ford would trek the woods, learn all the odd ends of it. Part of that was finding out that there’d be a shorter distance from the stop to home, an overgrown path now, but one all the same. He just had to make sure to not let his bare legs touch any of the potentially poisonous undergrowth.

   There was a cracking of twigs somewhere behind Dipper, and he whipped around to see what it was.

   Nothing, absolutely so, was behind him. The forest was quiet, like an unsettling blanket had rested over the forest. There were no birds annoyingly chirping, no squirrels attempting to find food in the trees, it was quiet. Above all else, it was getting dark quick.

   He tried to shake off the odd feeling of the woods around him as he turned and walked at a faster pace. Dipper couldn’t help but feel like something was suddenly irrevocably wrong about the woods. The sky seemed to have ashen in a matter of seconds, cloaking the whole forest in an unnatural monochrome. Dipper felt on edge, the sound of his feet moving through the brush seeming to echo in the woods. His pace increased, breathing stuttering a bit under the weight of carrying his belongings. He needed out of the forest, the notches in the trees even looked wrong now, like thousands of carved eyes staring back at him.

   A loud crack sounded through the woods behind him. Dipper spun around, near hyperventilating from the pure fear coursing in him.

   "Who’s there?" He screamed.

   Nothing followed for a few seconds, just the unnerving silence.

   Then, a soft, golden glow somewhere too deep in the woods for Dipper to find the source of. A loud, near shrieking cackle broke through the woods; it echoed and rolled in on its own sound. Dipper’s ears rang over the piercing noise. The encompassing noise seemed to morph into thousands of words and litanies that Dipper couldn’t understand.

   In the mass of speech deep in the woods, one sentence resonated louder than those screamed around it.

   "Took you long enough, kid."

   Dipper woke to the sounds of birds cawing in the canopy of trees above him, illuminated in a rusted glow from the setting sun. Poison ivy scratched at his cheek and he hissed at the itch of it. His bags were strewn haphazardly around him.

   He looked confused at the forest surrounding him. It had been a dream? A terror that Dipper couldn’t shake hung on his shoulders heavily. Slowly, he picked up his things and continued walking slowly. At each thought that what had happened must have been a dream, the forest in his mind laughed at him.

__

   Dipper stopped briefly at the edge of the clearing, taking his old home in. Suddenly, he realized just how long it’s been.

   The now shut down Mystery Shack still held up the iconic broken sign. Now, more moss and dead leaves were stuck in the nooks of the letters. The weather worn wood did little for the shack’s appearance. If it weren’t for Ford’s truck in the gravel driveway, Dipper would have thought it abandoned.

   He wondered, if this was how the Shack was doing, then how had the rest of the Falls been bearing these years? From the emails that he’d get from his friends in Gravity Falls said that it’s been underwhelming as ever. Though his social contact to those still in the hick town were now limited to the Northwest twins. Even Wendy had left for college far from the town since Dipper’s last visit two years ago, he hasn’t heard from her since.

   Sighing, he picked his things back up and walked to the porch, where a faded blue sofa still sat next to the screen door. The wood planks under Dipper’s feet creaked under him as he stepped up to the house.

   "Grunkle Ford?" He called. Footsteps followed quickly after.

   "Hang on- wait!" Dipper heard Ford yell, though it didn’t seem to be directed at him if the loud bang and two new sets of feet that ran through the house were any indication.

   The screen door swung open; a tall, familiar face nearly fell over the door frame.

   "Dipper!" the platinum blond was bursting with his excitement.

   Dipper couldn't help but smile back at his old friend.

   Grunkle Ford joins him at the door, his glasses are askew and he looks disheveled. He resembled his twin after long and eventful summer days that would leave all of the house's occupants of the house tired. Dipper couldn't help but count the similarities between the two, from the stained white tank top, sloppily proud smile, and forceful pats on Dipper's shoulder; they were identical in their mannerisms.

   Ford led Dipper in, and down the hallway he could see the shabby living room. There, sitting in an old blue chair, was Stan.

   He was in a worse state than Ford, clad in a tank top and boxers with Ford's old robe thrown loosely on. He looked tired and small, Stan's eyes were glazed over and half closed, as if he were about to sleep.

   The thought of Grunkle Stan's health edged back to the forefront Dipper's thoughts.

   "Wow, Dipper," Gideon said, grabbing Dipper's attention back, "over the years you've... shrunk?"

   Dipper let out a hiss of protest at the comment his friend chortled.

   Gideon looked different from childhood, completely grown out of childish features, now tall and lanky. He even lacked the fancy clothing that the Northwests would force him an Pacifica in. He was wearing a simple dirty shirt and ragged jeans, utterly the opposite of Dipper's childhood memories.

   "You're still a jerk, Gid." Dipper said, smiling fondly, "It's been a while, huh?"

   Gideon nodded, attempting to bite back his wide grin, he opened his arms, "Hug for Paz?"

   Dipper smiled broadly, remembering all the times they would drag his twin into unwarranted embraces, to which she'd screech about commoner germs until accepting defeat and giving in.

   He hugged his friend, "Hug for Pacifica."

   "Gideon," Ford said when they broke apart, "can you take Dipper's thing to his old room?"

   He groaned out an 'ok', taking Dipper's things and jogging up the stairs. Dipper listened as the ceiling creaked beneath Gideon from upstairs, then silence as he moved to Dipper's old room in the attic.

   Ford turned to Dipper expectantly, both of the finally taking a moment to address the issue for Dipper's extended stay. "Ford," Dipper spoke quietly, "How is Grunkle Stan?"


	2. How is Stan?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something is happening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so, twelve am isn't when I wanted to post this, but I take what I can get, you know? *cries*  
> welp, here the thing is, I don't really like this one as much, but its enough  
> Enjoy!

The mug shattered as it hit the kitchen wall. Stan's angered yells mixed with Ford's exhausted reprimands. Dipper burrowed himself deeper next to Gideon. He felt so tired, the last night alone had been excruciating to watch as his Grunkle cursed him out for leaving his "twin" in Piedmont. Even after explaining multiple times that Dipper, in fact, have a twin and that he was simply confused, Stan still berated him senselessly for the idea of leaving the other behind.

Even now, he was fighting with Ford over yet another thing that had not happened.

"What do you mean you don't have it!"

"Stan, there is no memory eraser, there never was one!" Ford sounds desperate at this point.

"I need that, Sixer, we talked about why we needed it, why don't you have it!" Stan was just delusion, just like Gideon kept telling him, but it still hurt to see Stan like this. The reality that he had, all of these memories that he came up with, they chilled Dipper to the core.

"Why do you need it?" Why?

"Sixer, that golden tortilla chip is going to destroy everything, don't you realize this?" Everything he said, Stan believed in so firmly that it made Dipper think twice. 

When Stan was yelling at him for leaving his "twin" behind, just the way he said her name so vehemently (Dipper distinctly remembers his pale lips curling over the name "Mabel" over and over), was as if it were something that had always been, and will always be.

Gideon laughed sadly at Stan's last statement, leaning a little more on Dipper, as if he were sagging with the weight of how insane it sounded.

"Dip," Gideon whispered, "do you remember that one time that Stan let us lit illegal fireworks and Paz's extensions caught on fire?"

He does, and smiles, thinking of Pacifica's battle cry after the burnt hair had been removed, and how the rest of the day Gideon and Dipper were running from her in terror as she chased them with handfuls of dangerous explosives. Gideon even got hit in the face with one, it made him lose his last baby tooth. The next grew back a little awkward, a gap that's still present in all his bleach white smiles.

"Or that one time when the four of us had to karaoke together in order to stop an onslaught of the undead that crashed Pacifica's Halloween party," Gideon said, laughing a little at the memory, "I still blame Ford for showing me the page in the journal."

Dipper cackled, "Even after he said not to, you did the incantation!"

"How was I supposed to know that it actually did that?" Gideon giggled.

There was still arguing behind them, but at the moment, Dipper was satisfied with memories of who Stan was. It filled him with some security that the man Dipper knew was indeed in there.

\--

"Waddles!" the brunette screamed, jogging down the street with flyers clutched in her hand. She stopped at another pole to staple the paper inked with a blotchy picture of her clutching a pig. The sun was setting and she had yet to find him. Mabel sagged under the weight of the idea that she might not find her beloved pet.

Ever since the big move her family made from Portland, Waddles had been antsy, he hadn't liked his new pen or the smell of the mud here. Mabel felt like she should have seen this coming, Waddles had done it before so she knew the signs, but she'd just been so busy trying to unpack her life to notice. She felt like an awful pet owner.

"'M sorry, Waddles." Mabel sniffed. She tried to close her eyes and compose herself in the crowded street, but the idea that she may not find get her best friend back made tears droop on her lashes.

"Uhm, Are these, like, yours or something?" an exhausted voice broke her thoughts, "Because I think I know where the thing went."

Mabel nearly screamed in joy, "Really? Where, oh gosh, can you take me there?" She beamed at her savior pleadingly.

The girl, a tall and thoroughly tired bleach-blond that had mud stains on her outfit, groaned. "You know what? Sure, let's go find the livestock in the woods, why not?"

Mabel's smile fell, "The woods? How do you know Waddles is there?"

The woods were big, her heart sunk, it would be hard to find him if she left now, it's almost dark. She had twenty minuets at best. That would not be enough time to comb the woods.

The blond cringed, "He took my jacket, so I chased him to the woods near the diner." She held up a tattered purple sweatshirt with mild disgust.

She turned and waved for Mabel to follow her, the brunette fell into step next to her. They didn't walk long before they were climbing over the short, dead underbrush. The sun was falling even faster, the glow starting to dim as it became twilight. It made Mabel nervous, she didn't know the woods here at all, and she wasn't too sure how well the other did either. What if they got lost in here? It looked so thick, there's no way anyone could tell which way to go in the dark.

"Are you sure we're going the right way? Oh, sorry, I forgot, I'm Mabel," She said, trying to fill the uncomfortable silence, "You're?"

"You forgot?" She rolled her piercing eyes. "Pacifica Northwest, my family basically owns this town, I can get around these woods better than most. So, yes."

Mabel felt a little dumb for asking now, the way Pacifica had addressed herself was as if she should have already known. Any other questions Mabel asked were either rebuffed or ignored as it got increasingly darker in the woods. It felt wrong in the forest, the birds were seemingly still in the trees, there were squirrels simply hanging onto the tree in place. All unmoving and slowly slipping to grey around Mabel.

Between the trees, she saw something that looked like carved stone. Mabel stopped walking, it was triangular with what seemed like limbs coming from either side of it, while the lower portion was stuck in the ground. The large, single eye in the middle of it was seemingly staring back at her. Chills ran down her spine. Somewhere behind Mabel, Pacifica was calling for her attention, but she felt frozen by some unknown force. The longer she locked eyes with the statue, the more unsettled she felt. It was like a great, encompassing void that engulfed her, she had no idea what was happening to her, but as she fell, Mabel could only think one thing.

Something doesn't feel right in this town.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter will be next week and as always, if there is a grammatical error tell me and i'll fix it as fast as I can.  
> Hope you liked it!


	3. Nice of You to Join

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's that in the woods?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my gosh, this is reeeeaaally late, im so sorry guys! maybe i'll be able to pull out two chapeters thiss week, but it's been pretty crappy lately and I haven't been able to focus. Well, here's the next chapter, Enjoy, guys!

The world seemed to be burning gold. Mabel couldn't see past the iridescent glow that made her eyes burn. Slowly, the glow faded to the forest she had just been in. She looked up to Pacifica in her confusion of what had happened, but the girl wasn't there. The monochrome forest was dark and silent, and the foliage showed no sign movement. A chill ran down Mabel's spine, something wasn't right here.

Then, somewhere behind her, that same eerie glow was flowing between the trees, seemingly the only source of color or light in the woods.

"So," A voice, high pitched and grating on Mabel's ears, drawled, "we meet now, Shooting Star. Looking for something, huh?"

Mabel's head pounded as she tried to focus on the words and not the way they overlapped over each other in an overwhelming echo. She reeled trying to understand what the voice was booming, and for a moment the forest was quiet, allowing Mabel to collect herself to answer it.

"Yeah, I am." she spoke loudly, if only to talk over the ringing left behind in her ears, "Who are you?"

The voice cackled, and the sound was worse and more bone chilling than it's speech alone, "Let's not focus on me right now, kid. Let's talk about you. You really want to find that fat, pink thing, right?"

Again, Mabel had to wait a few moments for the echo of his words to stop bouncing around the forest before she spoke, "Yes, my pig, Waddles-"

"Perfect," the voice screeched, "I can handle it on one condition, Shooting Star. You gotta go home and come back to the statue at sunset tomorrow. How's that sound?"

That, Mabel thought, sounded great, but how-

"Then it's settled," the voice answered. It could hear her thoughts, Mabel realized. "Yep, every one of them." Her stomach rolled, fear twisting her gut as she tried to understand what was happening.

"Now, now, Shooting Star, don't try to pull any fast ones on me just yet," The voice tutted, "Cant have you thinking you know what's happening."

"What is happening?" Mabel asked aloud, over the echoes in the forest. She felt, for a moment, as if she were going mad.

The voice laughed, the broken and scratchy sound made Mabel's head throb. "What," It said slowly, "indeed." Her head spun, her vision unable to focus on an one point in the forest. It blurred into bright gold and washed greys. Her eyes watered at the intensity of the light, suddenly too bright and shadows too dark.

As Mabel fell, the voice cracked back into her ears, much quieter, yet more horrifying to hear. "See you soon, Shooting Star."  
__

Gideon stared at the pig, with a bewildered amusement. "Why, hello there," he chuckled at the animal as it squirmed in a puddled of mud left by the still running hose. He approached the pig slowly, hands partially raised, unsure of how to properly get close to it. The pig noticed the blond and struggled a moment to rise on its small legs. Squealing as it waddled toward Gideon, when it was close enough, he scooped the pig up. Laughing at how it fell limply into his hold instead of struggling.

"Alright, little buddy, let's go show Dip who I found." He chuckled, shifting the animal's heavy weight as he walked back to the shack.

The moon, he noticed, while struggling to open the screen door, was strangely yellow, tonight.

Dipper was sitting at the table, in the same spot Gideon left him in an hour earlier when he left to help Ford. The brunet was poured over a book and seemingly endless amounts of papers. A ballpoint pen, the object of Dipper's current wrath, he chewed on it incessantly as he tried to digest whatever it was he was reading.

"Look!" Gideon said cheerfully, "I found a pig!"

Dipper looked up slowly, his face scrunched up in slight disbelief, "You found... what?"

Gideon simply held the pig up higher in response, Dipper's disgust at the state of the two making him groan. "Go," Dipper instructed them, pointing toward the bathroom. "Clean yourselves, please, before Ford sees how much mud you're covered in"

Dipper chuckled and shook his head as he watched Gideon loose his grip on the pig. The animal squealed and ran for the living room, Gideon chased after it in earnest, but it had already reached Stan and the man was yelling for the blond to get the filthy "Waddles", as he referred to the pig, off of him. Then Ford, came upstairs at all the ruckus, surprised and confused in his efforts to help the recapture of the pig as it ran rampant in the house.

"Gideon!" Ford roared as he attempted to chase the pig through the kitchen, narrowly avoiding Dipper, who was quickly making his way upstairs with an armful of papers. Dipper ducked around his Grunkle as he slipped in his haste on mud.

"I'm sorry!" The blonde said as he jogged into the kitchen, "I couldn't leave it outside."

Ford gave him an unimpressed look that Gideon shrunk under. "Let's just get this under control, alright. Think of it as practice."

Dipper, now ascending the stairs, pricked his ears to the conversation when he heard that. Practice, he wondered, for what? He tread the cracking steps with a little more care, as to hear what they were saying.

"Which one are we going to do?" Gideon sounded excited. There was a brief moment of silence, a thoughtful pause by Ford that was, no doubt, done solely for dramatic effect.

"We'll get it to the living room, herd it from either side, got it?" He said. Gideon nodded, and Dipper heard their shoes squeak on the wood floor.

Dipper lost interest now that they had left, theories of things he had been reading swirling in his head. He still couldn't get over what had happened the day he had arrived. Something was definitely not normal about it. A lot of somethings, if Dipper was honest. He felt like he was missing a key piece to it all. Everything that Stan was rambling about, it felt... familiar, somehow.

The door creaked open loudly in the otherwise silent upper floor of the shack. He closed it slowly, finding some humor in the drawn-out squeak of the hinge. He padded through the room, placing his things on the old desk before sitting down on the lone bed in the otherwise empty room. Dipper yawned, stretching himself out on the mattress, curling up with the already mused blankets. Maybe tonight, he hoped, he'd be able to sleep straight through.

He woke up in the forest... Or rather, he woke in some version of it. The woods were grey-scaled and utterly motionless. Just like then. Twice, he had dreams like then, both had been quiet, Dipper simply sat there, waiting for the booming voice to make it's reentry so that he could berate it with questions. This time, Dipper was going to walk around the forest, get lost in it's monochrome haze, see if he could find anything out for himself.

He hiked in the woods aimlessly, for what seemed like hours. He was tired, had no idea what he was doing or its purpose. He relented.

"Hey!" He yelled, as if the louder he got the more likely he'd be noticed. "Uhm, why am I here?"

Nothing, of course, Dipper thought bitterly, why would there be an answer-

A laugh, much more akin to a deranged cackled, started somewhere deep in the woods and Dipper couldn't help but laugh with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I..... finished it. One twenty five in the morning on a Saturday. Again, if there are any errors, let me know. Hope you liked this one, its a bit longer than the rest, hooray.

**Author's Note:**

> This will update on a (hopefully) regular basis, so next week chapter two will most likely be up. There, some others will show up and the plot will officially get going! Also, Stan will be rambling.  
> Hope you liked this chapter!


End file.
